Former mob hit-man-with-a-conscience Pietro “Bearclaw” Brnwa, a.k.a. Dr. Peter Brown, a.k.a. Dr. Lionel Azimuth, late of the witness protection program, currently hiding out and miserable as a cruise ship doctor, is back after his rollercoaster turn in Josh Bazell’s bestselling first book, Beat the Reaper. And Wild Thing is a welcome return, indeed, with a grim and funny plot filled with a whole mess o’ violence, double-crossings, drug abuse, flamboyant lies and sexual tension.

The plot is amusingly over-the-top: Azimuth is hired by a reclusive billionaire (“Rec Bill”) to go on a kind of safari-cum-field trip to White Lake in Minnesota — to vet an invitation from “tour guide” Reggie Trager, who claims that there’s a Nessie-type monster (only nastier) living in the lake. The cost to participate in this “search and observe” mission? A cool million. While Azimuth is deeply skeptical, there’s some video that looks eerily realistic, and even faked footage wouldn’t account for the actual dead bodies on record. Is the whole thing a hoax gone too far, or is there some truth to the urban legend? While Azimuth doesn’t want to go on this ridiculous trip, the money he’s offered by Rec Bill is good enough that it might give him the chance to get the mob permanently off his back — so he reluctantly agrees. On the bright side, it’ll get him off the crazy hellhole of a cruise ship (what Beat the Reaper exposed about busy hospitals, Wild Thing does with life on a cruise liner).

Aiding Azimuth on his mission is sexy palaeontologist Dr. Violet Hurst, who has many doom-and-gloom warnings relating not to the monster, but to climatology. After her first appearance, if you don’t head right out to buy a generator, crossbow, seeds, canned goods, bottled water and maybe some oxen, then you’re heroically optimistic about the future of the human race.

Joining Violet, Azimuth and guide Reggie on their trip to find the lake monster are various obscenely wealthy people and one celebrity cameo, whose presence is highly amusing and a surprise I won’t spoil for readers.

Bazell’s dialogue is so sharp and funny that you almost don’t care if the plot advances or not; you’re just so happy to be around these people, listening to Azimuth’s snarky asides (in the footnotes) and verbal sparring. Violet’s takedown of an annoying fundamentalist on the subject of evolution is particularly amusing. But the story itself moves at a good clip, and is delightfully gruesome and fun. Until the big reveal, it’s impossible to tell whether there is something genuine with teeth in the lake, or whether it’s the equivalent of just another old guy in a mask, à la Scooby-Doo.

Wild Thing is also that rare book in which the footnotes and the appendices are just as sharp-tongued and interesting as the narrative itself. (And I say this as someone who never made it past the first three pages of Appendix A in The Lord of the Rings.) There’s a wealth of information thrown at the reader, but it’s never preachy; instead, it’s delivered in a wry, “Hey, can you believe this?” kind of way. And Bazell has an uncanny narrative knack for describing situations and people we’ve all seen before, but making them fresh and unusual.

Josh Bazell has been described as “hilarious in that Elmore Leonard way,” which is true, though he’s probably weirder and grimmer than Leonard in many ways — but that’s a good thing. My only real criticism is that the story ends too abruptly, but that may just be due to a desire to be part of these characters’ lives for longer than the author allows.

However, I really do wish the book were better designed; Wild Thing has, if such a thing is possible, a worse cover than Beat the Reaper. This isn’t a book I’d ever have picked up in a store because, frankly, its crazy DayGlo colours and dull abstract design is ludicrous. It doesn’t look like a thriller, but if anything, a rock ’n’ roll memoir. But a book in the vein of Elmore Leonard? Never. And Bazell certainly deserves better.

Anyway, ignore the lurid orange and yellow cover and pick up Wild Thing — you won’t be disappointed. Just keep your limbs inside the canoe while you’re reading.